


A Night at Michelle's

by JuxtaGay



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Mostly Fluff, a mention of blood for like 0.2 seconds, and not real blood so shrug, i mean only a little angst??, smallest dose of angst possible, they're in lesbians everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 12:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8844286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuxtaGay/pseuds/JuxtaGay
Summary: Nightmares have a funny, awful way of opening wounds both old and new.Maureen dreams up some stuff best left bottled up and smothered. There's only one person she can think to go to.(Baby's first fic holy crap please be kind)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HEY!! This fic's got SPOILERS!
> 
> If you're not past episode 90B, not only will this spoil a ton for you, but you won't even understand what I'm talking about!  
> Hello friends this is the first fic I've ever written so Gentle Feedback is very much appreciated! Also I don't know how tags work yet so if I made a mistake please tell me
> 
> Anyways happy chapter one everybody

Maureen would have you believe that her heart pumped ice and cynicism. Her face always set with stony apathy and disappointment, you’d think she already hated you the moment you locked eyes with her. A glacier living in a tiny desert oasis.

But Michelle saw a side of Maureen that no one else seemed to. It was like nobody else knew how fragile and passionate she could be underneath her protective layers of indifference, negativity, and city-mandated gas mask.

And if Michelle knew one thing, it was that she liked things nobody else knew about.

The way she saw it, keeping her preferences hidden was safer. You can’t deride or shame or publicly ostracize something nobody knows about. Though complete secrets were near impossible to maintain in the town of Night Vale (or anywhere in the world, really), there were still a few enigmas that even the vaguest and most menacing government agencies couldn’t crack. And though the unfathomable intentions of clouds or the contents of the echidna were infamously elusive mysteries, they were nothing compared to what Maureen hid inside herself.

Michelle relished every opportunity to learn new things about Maureen. Each little detail, every tiny preference or aversion was a new thing that only Michelle knew about, and it thrilled her to pry any small bit of information from her girlfr—from her unlabeled and unspecified acquaintance. Maybe sometimes she was too pushy about it, but she thought Maureen could use the pressure to help her vent her feelings now and again.

Because of all this, because of Michelle’s love for Maureen and the puzzles she presented with every encounter and the wonderful process of coaxing secrets from her, the first time Maureen spent the night at Michelle’s was one of the best nights of Michelle’s life. Though she did regret that something awful had to happen to bring Maureen to her doorstep in the first place.

 

Maureen was dressed for work, worn jeans and purple NVCR shirt for her job as a public radio intern, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. The beagle puppy, the foul thing she’d been forced to babysit for yet  _ another _ week, was sprawled across the floor and napping in front of the door so that Maureen  _ had _ to step past him to leave. She tiptoed carefully around the creature, terrified, because she already knew what was about to happen.

Maureen was shrieking silently, in her head, crying out and begging herself to  _ stop, please dear God STOP! _ But her body was moving as if it weren’t hers, as if she were outside and other instead of trapped within its fleshy confines, watching with dread as her feet came down and met the floor, met the floor, met the floor. And she wanted so badly to look away, but the body that wasn’t hers to command kept moving, kept her eyes trained on the ground as she watched it happen all over again, as she watched herself stumble on something unseen and her feet met the beast’s tail, his back paws, his underbelly.

Immediately Maureen rolled from surprise into a panic and tried to sprint for the door before the puppy caught up to her, even though she knew it was going to be locked and that it would be no use, no use, the demon already had her trapped, it would happen just the same.

The creature snarled, a sound so guttural and primal that even the largest beasts of the vilest worlds couldn’t mimic it, would bow to it. And he rose from the floor, pushing off with his front paws and letting his forelegs dangle at his sides like human arms, his face quickly contorting into something demonic. His maw opened and he huffed out each breath with a brimming fury, drooling over a gray tongue and teeth too big for his muzzle and lurching forward with black claws too big for their paws, and Maureen clawed and the door handle that had always been locked and shrieked, knowing too well, sickeningly well, the powers of the monster and that she didn’t stand a chance without Chad or a sacrifice to curb his rage.

But what followed next was unexpected: the walls of Maureen’s apartment collapsed, falling away to reveal a desert quite unlike the one she lived in but also very much like it. From the desert distances raged a sandstorm, violent and red and sending grit into the air, stones the size of golf balls flying past her. The brightest light she would ever see in her life swallowed the sky and rumbled towards the ground like a perfectly Earth-shaped meteor come to shoulder the planet out of the way with its horrid bulk.

And Maureen screamed and burned, and the rocks flew and cut into her flesh and her intern’s shirt she shouldn’t have been wearing, and her nails dug into the ground as she tried to keep from being swept away, and all around her was barking, snarling, gargling, coming from the earth and the light and the air and herself. The ground glowed with blood and Maureen recognized the symbols carved there, remembered them from every time she’d visited Chad’s house, and it took little to realize that she was the circle’s center, the sacrifice, and she howled like her soul had been blown away without her body. Her eyes saw only red and her mouth tasted only red as she blinked away the wind and coughed up the dust to make room for more, begging for the luxury of a clear breath but out of her nose was dust, through her mouth, dust, over her tongue, dust, dust, dust, mud,  _ blood _ , BLOOD—

 

Maureen woke up crying and choking for air, flailing out of bed and curling briefly into a fetal position on the floor as she brought herself back to reality. She felt grime still coating her and panicked, trying to drag herself back to full consciousness as she rubbed grime out of her eyes with shaky hands. The cold of the night dripped down her back as she clawed her way up the side of the bed and stood, confused and blind with tears and sand. She looked at her mud-streaked hands and her vision fuzzed as she doubted reality, and then she realized that her bed and sheets were completely caked with dirt from the deep desert. Furious and terrified and trembling like a leaf, she checked the pillow next to the one she’d been using and groaned. Just as she’d expected: she lifted three long, silver-grey hairs from the creases of the pillowcase and glared at them.

“Old  _ HAG! _ ” Maureen howled, the sound scraping against her already raw throat. She must have been screaming in her sleep again. “FACELESS OLD _ HAG! _ ”

She could almost hear her cabinets being filled with rotten bird teeth or something equally disgusting, but between the sand in her nose and the tears of fear streaming down her face, she cared little about the Faceless Old Woman’s potential wrath.

Maureen angrily tore her sheets from her bed, tossed them in the corner on her pile of dirty laundry, and curled across her bare mattress, shivering and trying to stem the tears and the memories. Her emotions were firing on all cylinders, filling her with directionless dread and regret and self pity and self loathing and  _ pain _ . It was one of those rare times when all that she had to keep bottled up suddenly overwhelmed her, made her heart feel bloated and sick even though there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could go. Usually she’d take the day off from work and sleep it off until she lapsed back into apathy and mute despondency. But now that she was between jobs, there was nothing to break her cycle, no status quo to return to, and she feared that without any anchor she would simply slip into an anxiety-ridden depressive spiral for days, or worse.

But when she checked her phone to see what time it was—or at least  _ around _ what time it was, since no clock in town was very trustworthy and they all seemed to run slightly different times anyways—she realized that now she  _ did _ have somewhere to go. The one and only comforting presence left in Night Vale.

And in this moment of weakness, without thinking it through, she got up and went to look for her shoes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POSTING THE REST IN CELEBRATION OF EPISODE 100 BECAUSE I WANTED TO WAIT A LITTLE WHILE BUT NOW I CAN'T WAIT ANOTHER SECOND MORE

It was already around 3 am according to Michelle’s phone, but according to her grandfather clock it was ten at night. Then again, she had made the clock herself back when she was into horology (which was SO three months ago, she didn’t even know why she kept it around anymore) so maybe it wasn’t that reliable, even by Night Valian standards.

She was just stitching together her third teddy walrus of the night—she knew walruses were going to be EXTREMELY popular in the coming months and it was important that she enjoyed them before everyone else ruined the tusked mammal for her—when there was a knock at her door. It made Michelle jump so suddenly that she pricked her finger with her fishbone needle while she stared at the door, wondering if she’d been hearing things. But no—another knock sounded, this one more desperate than the last.

Michelle put down her work and gingerly stepped around the table and the piles of her belongings scattered across the floor, so familiar with their placing that she barely had to think about where her feet were landing. The only people who ever visited Michelle were door-to-door bloodstone sellers (as if she didn’t already have several of her own, and as if it weren’t government mandated to possess at least four) or members of the Secret Police asking her about things that absolutely never occurred to anyone, even in the infinite expanse of her thoughts. And it was too late for salesmen and too early for the Police to be out, so who—

“Maureen?”

And it was—unsettled, hair matted, arms crossed, teeth grinding, shivering, restarting, sighing Maureen. Her tanktop and pajama pants, once patterned with bloodshot eyes and shattered bottles like something a little kid would wear, was streaked with something red that Michelle thought was blood for a panicked second before realizing it was more sandy than sanguine. Maureen shuddered violently in the frigid desert night, pale and hollow in the eyes and rubbing her bare shoulders to keep them warm.

“Holy shit, get inside! Were you, like, interrogated or something? You look awful!”

Maureen stayed quiet while Michelle ushered her inside and fussed over her, the blind panic she’d felt the entire time walking there beginning to subside. She’d never allowed her guard to be down around another person before, but having Michelle wipe the grime from her face and gently untangle her bedhead made her realize how much she longed for it. She would never admit to that, of course, but she did indulge herself by keeping quiet longer than she needed to.

Michelle’s guard was down, too, though she barely noticed. Her usual uncaring facade was gone, replaced by panic and worry. She made Maureen sit on the edge of the bathtub and scrubbed away the dirt with a rag and a shaky hand, then combed her fingers through Maureen’s hair until it was less of a tumbleweed. Maureen sat silent the entire time, seemingly recovering from something, but Michelle did notice a softness in her eyes as she let herself be taken care of.

“Okay, these should fit you, right? I mean, they’ll be a _ little _ tight, but baggy clothes are  _ totally _ gonna be the thing in a month or two, so all of my clothes are super big for me right now.” Michelle gave Maureen a pile of her own pajamas, all far too big for Michelle’s skinny frame but would fit snugly on Maureen. “Sorry if they’re not, like, your style or whatever.”

Maureen idly picked through the clothes in her lap, looking for something wearable. A lot of Michelle’s clothes were extremely intricate and hard to get into, while others were so thoroughly torn and stained that Maureen would be better off wearing nothing at all. Maureen managed to find a black t-shirt with the band name “WOODEN KNIFE MARQUEE” and a screaming pig wrapped in vines printed on it, with tour dates on the back. All the locations were different addresses in Old Town and on the same date, at extremely specific addresses. The only wearable pants were shorts that rode up almost all the way to her butt, which made her feel a bit self-conscious, if she was being honest. She wrapped herself in a quilt Michelle kept draped over the back of her sofa and leaned into Michelle’s touch as she tied Maureen’s hair back.

Maureen sat silently and focused on her breathing while Michelle whispered to her that she was safe, she was fine, things were alright. Then she exhaled so hard she shuddered and folded her legs underneath her, dropping the blanket in favor of clinging to Michelle’s arm and pressing her forehead into Michelle’s shoulder.

“D’you … d’you wanna talk abou—”

“It was a nightmare. That’s all.”

“But what about, uh … the mud?”

“Faceless Old Asshole decided to coat me in a  _ gift  _ in the middle of the night, and it didn’t help much.”

“Should you be insulting—?”

“Whatever. I don’t care.” Maureen’s voice cracked and she shook, wavering again.

“So … you’re sure you don’t wanna talk about it? ‘Cause like, I know you don’t like sharing things a lot of the time but—”

“The damn puppy, okay? And the Other Desert. And like … everything that’s ever happened to me? That’s what it was about. And I panicked and came here, and I shouldn’t have, but I did. Okay?”

“Hey, man, it’s alright, I’m kinda happy that you came here. Like, not that I like you having nightmares or anything, but I’m glad you thought of coming here while you’re having a bad time. It’s cool, y’know, that you trust me like that.” Michelle averted her eyes, thinking that she could avoid the sincerity of her words if she didn’t see Maureen receive it. “I want you to trust me.”

“... God, I just HATE this town SO MUCH!”

Maureen punched the table so hard the things on it shook and she left a dent in the wood. Michelle grabbed her glass of eggplant juice from its coaster before it was knocked over onto the afghan ferret-hair carpet.

“It’s turned me into a SPECTACLE! Like, are you kidding me? I’m afraid of ORANGE JUICE, MICHELLE! ORANGE JUICE! And WIND! That’s so fucking RIDICULOUS!”

Head in her hands, Maureen was shaking with rage. Michelle couldn’t think of anything to say, hadn’t known Maureen had felt this way at all, so she waited for Maureen to finish.

“Can you BELIEVE me? I’m such an IDIOT! I led an army for someone who was, I mean,  _ probably _ Satan? I don’t even know, but the only reason was for getting stupid college credit that I COULD have gotten from Palmer, but Lord KNOWS he doesn’t care about me enough to sign a damn piece of paper for me! Lord KNOWS I’m just an inconvenience to people, ‘oh God MAUREEN is here, look, she NEEDS something, what an inconsiderate ASS!’

“I was so desperate to feel like I was WORTH A DAMN that I just took the first bone anyone threw to me. I led an army for a devil, maybe THE Devil, and I … all those nice people … I can’t tell them I’m sorry, I just want to move on and not care, but … they suffered so much and-and I was part of why.”

“You weren’t the one that summoned the thing, though! Chad—”

“But I  _ helped _ Chad. I  _ kept _ helping him even after he told me what was really going on, just on principle and for some fucking  _ college credit! _ I just … can’t believe myself.”

Michelle wasn’t sure what to say, or that anything she could say would be of any help. So she did the next best thing: she rubbed circles into the small of Maureen’s back and waited for her to stop shaking.

Michelle’s touch became an grounding point for Maureen, helping her control her breathing as her brain spiraled in so many directions at once. It was strange—Maureen was used to this feeling of utter panic and shame overtaking her, and felt as if any moment she would tip over the edge and into a breakdown. Usually she was alone for these episodes, and usually she would come to her senses curled in a corner of her apartment, having spent hours so numb and afraid that time blurred around her faster than usual. But Maureen slowly realized that she wasn’t going to end up that way, that she was actually calming down, and was glad for Michelle’s very existence in a way no words could convey.

“I’m sorry if I interrupted anything,” Maureen finally said, pulling the quilt around herself again. “Those walruses are cute.”

“Aw, thanks! But they’re a lot less important than this. Are you better now?”

“I ran here. Two blocks. I couldn’t get my car to turn on.”

“It’s alright Maureen, you’re okay.”

“Actually now that I think about it I’m pretty sure the Faceless Old Woman took the engine out of my car. It did kinda smell like rotting milk in there, so—”

“Hey. D’you wanna get a pizza? Watch a movie? There’s a new romcom out by Claudio Monteverdi and it’s entirely in Taushiro so neither of us will understand a single word.”

“And what if I happen to have a Taushiro-to-English dictionary?”

“And what if the movie’s dialogue was also put through three different ciphers? I also hear the movie is four hours long without credits.”

“God, I hate artsy movies so much. Let’s do it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey this is gay here's the fluffiest part my dudes enjoy

The morning required Michelle to piece together the night’s events, one by one. She almost couldn’t believe it had happened.

She only woke up in the first place because the wolves she kept trapped under her bed (like any good samaritan did if they could afford the upkeep) jostled the bed so violently that her head smacked against the backboard. Though Michelle considered herself a charitable person, she was starting to think that their costs outweighed their benefits.

Then she heard something strange from outside—glass clinking. She knew it wasn’t the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lived in Her Home; she’d made it clear, after several oven fires, that she didn’t quite care for Michelle’s eating habits and had since left the kitchen mostly untouched. Hey, if the Old Woman didn’t realize how good Cream of Antler was with some goat milk and chives, it was her loss.

Michelle heard a loud clang and a string of expletives and remembered that her gir—that Maureen had stayed the night. The sudden awareness of her presence put Michelle at ease, somehow. She relaxed into her blankets and stared at the ceiling, patterned with cracks and criss-crossed by withered daisy chains and broken fairy lights, to let herself shake off the suffocatingly gentle grip of sleep.

Michelle remembered they’d finally watched that encrypted Taushiro movie she’d been sitting on, though she only took in a bit of it through Maureen’s raucous laughter (she didn’t mind that much—Maureen’s laugh was adorable, and sometimes she snorted if Michelle was lucky). They’d ordered pizza with eight different toppings and Michelle broke out a tub of her favorite chocolate and spinach ice cream, though she’d had to defend her tastes over Maureen’s exaggerated gagging. She recalled making it through one and a half slices of pizza, a huge meal for her usually meager appetite, before Maureen wolfed down the rest of the pie all by herself.

Maureen had wanted to sleep on the couch, and Michelle tried not to be too disappointed. They’d only known each other for a few months, after all; she was still a bit too afraid of rejection to ask if Maureen wanted a spot in her bed. And now Maureen was puttering around her apartment without her, the clatter from the other room relaxing but confusing Michelle and making the change in her regimen more pronounced.

Usually in the mornings, Michelle woke and immediately slipped into her haughty persona and her haughty shoes—they were red and made of bone, and made her four inches taller. She’d stumble around, only half awake, feeding whatever needed feeding and leaving sacrifices for whatever needed appeasing, then plop down at the scorched kitchen table and flip her laptop open.

First she checked up on several blogs and anti-blogs, Binging her current hobbies (because GOD, Google is SO 1757) to make sure NO ONE ELSE had talked about them yet. Then she’d cycle through her social media: crouton.net, MySpace, and Zinglebeeber, among others she didn’t like as much. Zinglebeeber was a website she’d made and published herself when she was into web design a few years back, but she’d made VERY SURE that NO ONE ELSE had access to it. But she did check it every day, just to see if someone had turned up. And then she was off to work, prepared to do her best to stop people from buying things that they shouldn’t be interested in.

This was a shake in her routine, and she wasn’t sure what to make of it. It should’ve been strange and uncomfortable, having another person milling about her home and seeing her things and making noise, but that was the most jarring thing of all: it  _ wasn’t _ . Michelle realized this, and felt the warmth of sleep being flushed out by a different warmth, something that blossomed in her chest, still sleepy, but less overpowering than the oblivion of unconsciousness. She didn’t mind that her usual secrecy and silence were gone; in fact, she found herself hoping that, maybe—

“Hey.”

Maureen stood in the doorway, a spatula in her hand. Michelle’s spatula, actually.

“D’you know how gross your cabinets are? They’re full of chard and bottled newt skins.”

“Newt skin is gonna be big soon, Maureen. Gotta get in on it before everyone’s doing it too.” Michelle turned to face Maureen, but only with her head. The rest of her body was sprawled in the thick of relaxation, slightly angled to the side, too calm to move from the comfort of its position, the comfort of her bed.

The comfort of the woman standing at the door.

Maureen struggled to keep her composure as Michelle flashed her a wonderfully sleepy and lazy smile. She had to physically restrain herself from crawling into the bed with her.

“Well, you’ll be happy to know we  _ aren’t _ eating newt flesh for breakfast.” 

“Oh, you don’t  _ eat _ the skin. You—”

“You can stop right there.”

 

Maureen had gone out shopping at the Ralph’s a block away and had bought enough to feed three lizard-kings. Or maybe Michelle just didn’t have as hearty of an appetite and this was how Maureen and other people normally shopped. It was all common food, stuff that everybody bought, which Maureen apologized for. Michelle pretended to only settle for it, but she was silently glad. She  _ had _ been getting sick of drinking the same ham and sashimi protein shakes for breakfast every day.

Michelle also tried very hard to hide her excitement when Maureen set her dish down and settled in the chair next to her. She’d made a Night Valian breakfast delicacy, a local dish that the town was extremely prideful in: they were called “pancakes” and they were basically flat circles of batter that people ate in stacks. Michelle loathed to admit it, but it was just about her favorite circular food, but she  _ never _ got to eat it. It was one thing to be mainstream, but it was worse to partake in a  _ tradition _ . She could NEVER been seen ordering  _ that  _ at a restaurant. Or be seen IN a restaurant, for that matter. Or most grocery stores.

“Oh, Maureen! You didn’t have to make anything like this, I would’ve—”

“Eh, cooking gave me something to do. I wanted to uh … to do something for you. Since, y’know, you let me stay. And I was … already awake, so, y’know.”

Michelle suspected why Maureen had been awake so early, given that she was definitely not an early riser, but she let it slide. Last night’s confessions were probably already exhausting and stressing her out, and she likely didn’t feel like divulging any more in such a short period of time. Michelle could understand that feeling very well.

Breakfast was silent, as it usually was in Michelle’s apartment, but it was a different type of silence. And Michelle was a  _ connoisseur _ of silence, so she would know. It wasn’t the type of silence you made by yourself on short notice; this was the silence of two, of months and years of non-silence, the lull of activity that only came after knowing what a person sounded like, what their personal silences felt like. It was a blending of two lonely quiets, the harmony of two lives buzzing together in the same room, lapsing into the still of each other as if mentally leaning on one another for support. This was what trust and comfort sounded like; and it spoke volumes to Michelle as she watched Maureen scarf down three whole “pancakes” lathered with syrup and powdered sugar.

She’d never felt a silence that was so full.

“So, um…. I guess you, like, need a ride, right?”

“Thure, I gueff.” Maureen swallowed and wiped at the corners of her mouth with the back of her wrist. “Sorry, I know my place is kinda out of your way.”

“It’s alright, I really don’t mind.”

Maureen collected her things and folded up the blanket she’d used overnight, stepping over the piles of burnt tinfoil and small ribcages and other random paraphernalia from Michelle’s odd interests. She found that she was already memorizing where things were after only two visits to the place, finding the drawer for the blankets without having to ask about it. She’d noticed this when cooking earlier as well, finding the pans and the cooking oil and Michelle’s spatula collection as if she were in her own home. She wasn’t quite to the point where she could find the silverware drawer, but she was getting there, or at least she hoped she was. The idea of feeling at home with Michelle set her heart fluttering, though she was careful not to let it show.

She did regret coming all the way to Michelle’s and freaking out, just to have another nightmare and wake up in a heap on her floor. It was basically the same nightmare, this time without her anachronistic NVCR shirt and without most of the panic upon waking. The Faceless Old Woman decided to spare her from any cruelty this time around. At least waking up at Michelle’s had kept her calm.

She regretted having to spend the next night alone, after such a wonderful break.

“I’ve got my stuff then,” Maureen said, leaning against the counter and watching Michelle finish gathering up the dishes and throwing them out the window. She could hear them shattering against the wall of the building next to Michelle’s apartment.

“I hope you’re not in a hurry, my car’s got invisible wheels so it takes a long time to get anywhere.” Michelle dumped the silverware they’d used out the window and shut it as the forks and knives clattered on the ground. There was a scuffling of footsteps as the community surveillance team sprinted out from hiding and scooped up the ceramic and the forks to put into plastic baggies and label as “EVIDENCE”.

“It’s alright. I’m between jobs right now anyways. Not much to do at home.”

Then there was another silence, one Michelle knew well: stiff and awkward, a silence that was charging up to something. Michelle pretended to straighten the kitchen out so Maureen had more time to think about what she wanted to say. She was surprised; she’d never thought her knowledge of silence would ever be this handy. That the absence of interaction would have so much to say about an exchange.

Maureen forced a cough, fidgeted in the clothes that weren’t hers.

“So … thanks. For letting me stay. And I, uh … I’m glad that you were there. To see that, I mean. To hear it. You being there helped a lot. I’m … happy that I had you there.”

“It’s no big deal,” Michelle said, stepping forward. At work she always had the counter to lean on, and the support made her feel bigger than herself. Like she was borrowing the weight of whatever she was touching. Standing in front of Maureen in the middle of her kitchen made her feel small and exposed, like she was balancing on a rock in the middle of a harbor. It was a new feeling, and it made her nervous but also exhilarated her. She clasped her hands behind her back, like she was ashamed to have them attached to her body and idle.

“And I mean … if you ever need a place to crash, I’ve totally got space. I know the couch isn’t that great, but like, I’ve got a hammock on the balcony made of straw and the dreams of mice if you think that’d work. Oh! Don’t worry, it’s got a canopy that’s glass-proof AND blood-proof, so you’re totally fine if it rains.”

“I-I dunno….” Maureen seemed embarrassed, and she was. She didn’t like being caught off-guard like that, and she was afraid of a repeat of last night. She was afraid that Michelle would see the broken bits of her and scatter to the wind.

“I mean, I’m not gonna force you, but I really would like it if you … if you dropped by more often.” Michelle felt like her entire body was a raw nerve, but the feeling was worth it to make Maureen turn  _ that _ shade of red and cross her arms reflexively.

“Well, I’m, I, uh … I mean, are you sure? I’m not really the best to … be around. I mean, I’m not the most open person a lot of the time, y’know.” She studied her bare feet, hyper aware that she had never in her life been this flustered in front of another person, and definitely not in front of someone she cared about so much.

“You think I don’t know that? Maur, that’s like one of my  _ favorite _ things about you! I love how secretive you are! You know how I feel about things nobody knows about—I love them!”

It was a roundabout way of professing her emotions, but it worked. Maureen covered her face with her hands and pressed a self-conscious breath between her palms. Her shoulders shook twice with something Michelle realized was a giggle.

A thrill laced itself up Michelle’s spine and made her grin. She hadn’t known making someone else happy and embarrassed felt so _ nice _ . She decided to ride the feeling one step further.

“And, I mean, if the hammock isn’t your style,” Michelle said through a smirk, stepping forward to pull Maureen’s hands from her face, “there’s always my bed, y’know.”

THAT prospect made Maureen’s brain fuzz over, pushing her face-forward into a delighted daze.

Her smile stayed plastered in place as she hugged Michelle, as they walked down to where the car was parked, and all the way to Maureen’s apartment, even as the car’s axles grinded on the road loud enough to drown out all thought. Michelle’s eyes kept flicking over to her, as if making sure her grin stayed in place. She was smiling, too; she never got to see genuine smiles from Maureen, and so her entire week was already made.

Maureen slammed her front door shut after saying goodbyes that were too long and too many, pressing her back into the wood, clinging to the shopping bag of her dirty pajamas and leftover “pancakes” she’d brought home. She looked down at the shirt and jeans Michelle had let her borrow, both green corduroy and hideous but so genuinely Michelle in the way they felt and looked and smelled. Everything seemed bright and happy in her lonely apartment all of a sudden, and she almost skipped to her bedroom to take care of her dirty clothes, something that would’ve mortified her in public but that she didn’t seem to care much about in the moment.

So she stowed the leftovers away, gathered up the laundry, and gently placed the stuffed goldenrod walrus she found at the bottom of her bag on her nightstand, already planning to drop by Dark Owl Records to see if Michelle was available for dinner.


End file.
